Nuggets of Knowledge about the 60s

February 24, 2009|By Herald Times Staff

Take a trip through the 1960s

The 1960s was a decade of music, movements, and moods. It was also a decade of memorable firsts and unforgettable tragedy. The following is a timeline of some of the events that made headlines from 1960-1969:

• A shave and a haircut cost two bits more when the price of a haircut in Otsego County went up to $1.50 Feb. 1, 1960, according to Otsego County Herald Times’ archives. All other trims and shaves went up a quarter too.

• In crime, the Feb. 25 Herald Times reported Gaylord resident Donald Slivinski had his hub caps stolen off his 1956 Pontiac while he was attending a dance in Johannesburg. There were no leads, and the whereabouts of the hub caps are still a mystery.

• In outdoors news, 232 adult northern pike were transported from the Seney Waterfowl (Wildlife) Refuge in the Upper Peninsula and dumped into the pond (Hoxie Marsh) at the north end of Otsego Lake April 28, 1960. The fingerlings were then released into the lake. The program continues to this day but uses adult pike from Otsego Lake itself.

• On a more solemn note, a story ran in the May 5 edition telling readers “for about $25 to $150 per person, families can construct shelters … into which they can go after any nuclear attack to stay alive until radiation intensity outside lessens to safe levels.”

Source: Herald Times’ archives

Hip to be square

“Dig it man. That skirt is really decked out. Looks like she’s going to a Chinese fire drill if her cat can get it together and peel out before the fuzz show up.”

Cram all of the 60’s counter-culture onto a techni-colored bus christened “Further” and send it on a psychedelic drug-fueled trip across the country — no, it’s not the lost episodes of The Partridge Family.

It’s the fantastic journey of writer Ken Kesey; “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” author, who, in 1964, paired up with Neal Cassady and a group of friends called the Merry Pranksters. The trip came on the heels of the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests where Kesey hosted parties featuring performances by the Grateful Dead (then The Warlocks), black lights and lots of the psychedelic drug LSD during a time when it was still legal.

Cassady drove the bus from California to New York for the release of Kesey’s book, “Sometimes a Great Notion”, and the trip was documented by the Merry Pranksters in video and photos, and immortalized in Kesey’s book “The Further Inquiry.”

The bus, in disrepair but still sporting its colorful coat and a ceiling covered in psychedelic paintings, is parked in Pleasant Hill, Ore.